Although a larger post on this topic and the topic of a social politics of community will be appearing soon on the openned blog I think this quote bears some relevance to the London/Cambridge debate, if indeed there is, or should be one:
"Each objective is constructed on the trace of that perspective that it puts under erasure; each political object is determined in relation to the other, and displaced in that critical act. Too often these theoretical issues [London/Cambridge] are premtorialy transposed into organisational terms and represented as sectarianism. I am suggesting that such contradictions and conflicts, which often thrawt political intentions and make the question of commitment complex and difficult, are rooted in the process of translation and displacement in which the object of politics are inscribed. The effect is not stasis or a sapping of the will. It is, on the contrary, the spur of the negotiation of socialist democratic politics and policies which demand that questions of organisation are theorized and socialist theory is 'organized', because there is no given community or body of the people whose inherent, radical historicity emits the right signs."
Homi Bhabha, The location of Culture (London,New York: Routledge,1994)p.39
Although of course there is a conceptual leep from Bhabha's notion of 'theoretical issues' to the cultural politics of space wherein London or indeed Cambridge poets are embedded and indeed embodied. But if the argument comes down to which group or set of poets has the most sociocultural hegemony then:
"as I see it, the work of hegemony is itself the process of iteration and differentiation. It depends on the production of alternative or antagonistic images that are always produced side by side and in competition with eachother. It is the side-by-side nature, this partial presence, or metonymy of antagonism, and its effective significations, that give meaning (quite literally) to a politics of struggle as the struggle of identifications and the war of positions".
[...]
"Hegemony requires iteration and alterity to be effective, to be productive of politicized populations: the (non-homogenous) symbolic-social bloc needs to represent itself in a solidary collective will -a modern image of the future - if those populations are to produce a progressive government."
ibid., p.43
So lets enrich the debate by all means, but all poets find some kind of audience anyway, and if they don't surely it is the job of those poets to manufacture their own cultural outlets and social networks (there seems to be too much brooding and not enough doing). Its the differences which are productive, surely. It seems futile to conceptualise politics in relationto the text purely on the basis of 'class', 'gender' or 'race', 'right wing' or 'left wing', 'Cambridge or London', as Matthias Fritsch argues in a wholly different context:
"The call to responsibility in reltaion to a 'tradition of oppressed' is not to be opposed to the history of violence in a binary fashion, but we must precisely be seen as produced and carried along by this history, as if in spite of itself." p.158
The Promise of Memory: History and Politics in Marx, Benjamin, and Derrida ... Matthias Fritsch
The poetry scene is not a unified totality of oppressor and oppressed, there are however, winners and losers (in terms of cultural hegemony). Well, all things have their time, and their space in time.
It seems to me from more of an outsider's perspective that the London/Cambridge divide is something that a) people don't know exist, b) believe is outdated and no longer applies, or c) are completely convinced of and consider it something to be fostered.
I agree totally with: 'So lets enrich the debate by all means, but all poets find some kind of audience anyway, and if they don't surely it is the job of those poets to manufacture their own cultural outlets and social networks (there seems to be too much brooding and not enough doing).' It seems that there are some (though this is by no mean all-inclusive as there poets out there doing great openly collaborative work through events and poetry) who would rather blame a pseudo-intellectual divide based purely on geographical location than themselves for things not getting done. I feel that these are the same people who favour collusion over open collaboration, who could bring good things to a socio-political environment if they were more open with their dealings. To a certain extent I include myself in this group, and I think more of an effort needs to be made through a policy of mutual interest and willingness to openly collaborate. It's not so much, for me, about making things happen, as things will happen by themselves if everyone has the right attitude.
Re-reading the initial comments made on Chris Goode's blog, this comment by Robin Purves does inspire a slight ammount of unease:
"I disagree with you that there is a "massive variety of interesting work being produced in Britain" - unless you are offering up the word "interesting" with all the snooker-loopy weakness that can inhere there. Hardly anyone engages my interest; there's probably about nine of them in total and two of them are over 60."
As I argued in my previous post, it does not really matter who provides a readership for work in London, as long as it does get a readership from somewhere, even if that is self created by the poets themselves, it is however a little sad that only nine poets can be counted as interesting, my number is a lot higher than that, perhaps my critical/appreciative faculties diminish or i am snooker loopy, i'm not so sure.
Monday 28 May, 2007
Reader Comments (3)
Although a larger post on this topic and the topic of a social politics of community will be appearing soon on the openned blog I think this quote bears some relevance to the London/Cambridge debate, if indeed there is, or should be one:
"Each objective is constructed on the trace of that perspective that it puts under erasure; each political object is determined in relation to the other, and displaced in that critical act. Too often these theoretical issues [London/Cambridge] are premtorialy transposed into organisational terms and represented as sectarianism. I am suggesting that such contradictions and conflicts, which often thrawt political intentions and make the question of commitment complex and difficult, are rooted in the process of translation and displacement in which the object of politics are inscribed. The effect is not stasis or a sapping of the will. It is, on the contrary, the spur of the negotiation of socialist democratic politics and policies which demand that questions of organisation are theorized and socialist theory is 'organized', because there is no given community or body of the people whose inherent, radical historicity emits the right signs."
Homi Bhabha, The location of Culture (London,New York: Routledge,1994)p.39
Although of course there is a conceptual leep from Bhabha's notion of 'theoretical issues' to the cultural politics of space wherein London or indeed Cambridge poets are embedded and indeed embodied. But if the argument comes down to which group or set of poets has the most sociocultural hegemony then:
"as I see it, the work of hegemony is itself the process of iteration and differentiation. It depends on the production of alternative or antagonistic images that are always produced side by side and in competition with eachother. It is the side-by-side nature, this partial presence, or metonymy of antagonism, and its effective significations, that give meaning (quite literally) to a politics of struggle as the struggle of identifications and the war of positions".
[...]
"Hegemony requires iteration and alterity to be effective, to be productive of politicized populations: the (non-homogenous) symbolic-social bloc needs to represent itself in a solidary collective will -a modern image of the future - if those populations are to produce a progressive government."
ibid., p.43
So lets enrich the debate by all means, but all poets find some kind of audience anyway, and if they don't surely it is the job of those poets to manufacture their own cultural outlets and social networks (there seems to be too much brooding and not enough doing). Its the differences which are productive, surely. It seems futile to conceptualise politics in relationto the text purely on the basis of 'class', 'gender' or 'race', 'right wing' or 'left wing', 'Cambridge or London', as Matthias Fritsch argues in a wholly different context:
"The call to responsibility in reltaion to a 'tradition of oppressed' is not to be opposed to the history of violence in a binary fashion, but we must precisely be seen as produced and carried along by this history, as if in spite of itself."
p.158
The Promise of Memory: History and Politics in Marx, Benjamin, and Derrida ... Matthias Fritsch
The poetry scene is not a unified totality of oppressor and oppressed, there are however, winners and losers (in terms of cultural hegemony). Well, all things have their time, and their space in time.
It seems to me from more of an outsider's perspective that the London/Cambridge divide is something that a) people don't know exist, b) believe is outdated and no longer applies, or c) are completely convinced of and consider it something to be fostered.
I agree totally with: 'So lets enrich the debate by all means, but all poets find some kind of audience anyway, and if they don't surely it is the job of those poets to manufacture their own cultural outlets and social networks (there seems to be too much brooding and not enough doing).' It seems that there are some (though this is by no mean all-inclusive as there poets out there doing great openly collaborative work through events and poetry) who would rather blame a pseudo-intellectual divide based purely on geographical location than themselves for things not getting done. I feel that these are the same people who favour collusion over open collaboration, who could bring good things to a socio-political environment if they were more open with their dealings. To a certain extent I include myself in this group, and I think more of an effort needs to be made through a policy of mutual interest and willingness to openly collaborate. It's not so much, for me, about making things happen, as things will happen by themselves if everyone has the right attitude.
Re-reading the initial comments made on Chris Goode's blog, this comment by Robin Purves does inspire a slight ammount of unease:
"I disagree with you that there is a "massive variety of interesting work being produced in Britain" - unless you are offering up the word "interesting" with all the snooker-loopy weakness that can inhere there. Hardly anyone engages my interest; there's probably about nine of them in total and two of them are over 60."
As I argued in my previous post, it does not really matter who provides a readership for work in London, as long as it does get a readership from somewhere, even if that is self created by the poets themselves, it is however a little sad that only nine poets can be counted as interesting, my number is a lot higher than that, perhaps my critical/appreciative faculties diminish or i am snooker loopy, i'm not so sure.
Another justification for the festival me thinks.